If you’ve ever gone fishing, then you know it requires a great deal of patience. So, what if you could fish in a barrel, and catch a lot of fish, rather than fish in the ocean and risk coming away empty-handed?

That would be great, right? Well, guess what, that ability to “fish in a barrel” is one of the advantages that is offered by Partner Plus, which was announced at Partner Summit last month. Partner Plus is targeted at partners who invest in selling Cisco to mid-sized customers, which IDC estimates as a $61B market opportunity. Aimed at accelerating business for these partners, Partner Plus provides incremental incentives, virtual engineering support, marketing, sales enablement, and customer intelligence to partners who commit to a highly collaborative selling approach with Cisco to accelerate their business more quickly than the market.

Partner Plus will bring together the power of Cisco sales and the partner sales force to go after the fast growing market opportunity with mid-sized customers. Watch this video to learn about the impact that Partner Plus can have in your business.

Read on to learn more about how Partner Plus can help you drive sales. Read More »

While sitting on a plane idly chatting with a small business owner last week, the conversation moved to computers. The guy was in the process of evaluating channel partners, and asked if it was important for a channel partner to offer managed services. My first instinct was to give him the falling-off-the-log obvious answer: “Well, gee… if you’re going to use managed services, then I guess my answer is yes. (Sarcasm sometimes gets the better of me, as you can see) But then I realized his question actually went deeper than that. Read More »

Very often, technology decisions occur because something broke, or perhaps because something has become so outdated or so difficult to manage that replacement of the offending product is the only way to avoid employee insurrection. But if your company’s technology decisions are solely made during such a state of emergency, then you’ve been missing the boat when it comes to getting the most out of your IT investment.

This is tantamount to driving your car and making left or right turns based solely on traffic conditions and then seeing where you end up at the end of the day. Not necessarily a bad thing if you’re just exploring the area, but it’s not exactly a business class response focused on expense control and profitability in a competitive environment.

The best way to prepare for a meeting with your channel partner depends, in large part, on how long you have been working together. We’re going to look at five key points, assuming that you and the partner are starting from Square One. If you’ve been working with the same partner for a considerable period of time, you may already have done some of these. But be on the lookout for anything you might have missed.

#1: Look at your IT needs from a business perspective, as well as a technological perspective.

This is not as basic as it might sound. What are the pain points of your company? Where are your costs just a little too high? What types of functions are slipping through the cracks? As you can surmise, the true potential of technology runs much deeper than the basics around email, Internet access and whatever applications you currently may be using. Your partner may have some ideas for new software that can remove extra cycles or help your people more effectively track functions that somehow get lost in the shuffle.

#2: Provide an accurate accounting of the systems and software already in place.

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